THE NEXT TIME YOU DIE

Dallas peeper Lee Oswald (Still River, 2005) is back for a second go-’round, and the body bags are filling faster than you can say, “Henry, not Harvey.”

Lee Henry Oswald grows weary now and again of having to explain his name, “the gift of a bull-headed father,” but he understands the necessity. Oswald’s a realist, and realism is the core attribute for survival in the gumshoe business. That’s why he reluctantly accepts as a client Lucas Linville, a bourbon-soaked Baptist preacher who looks like the latest solution to Oswald’s besetting cash-flow problem. A file containing basic data on a former employee named Reese Cunningham has gone missing. For reasons Preacher Linville doesn’t make clear, the Cunningham file is important, and he’ll pay Oswald to find it. Pretty soon it becomes clear that others share Linville’s high valuation of the missing file, and hard guys all over Dallas begin beating each other up and blowing each other away in search of it, cutting Oswald in for more than his share of the bloodletting. But the investigation is becalmed until it veers off in an unexpected and unsettling direction, connecting Oswald with a long-lost friend, one reputed to be dead and to whom Oswald has played Judas.

With so much biff-bam, bang-bang and vroom-vroom, who needs character development anyway? Oswald is not for those who do.